Start-up Story (Chapter 1): A story of bold ideas, melting dreams and resilience (Part 1)

I hope everyone had a refreshing break! Let’s kick off 2025 with a startup story. Next time you head out for a drink and ask for ice cubes, remember this story.

As you read this story, I’d like you to imagine yourself to be protagonist.

Bold Decision

Its early 1800’s. You are the third son of a wealthy American lawyer and brother of a leading literary figure. You have the option to go to Harvard and pursue a successful career. But you decide not to… Instead, you want to be an entrepreneur! The catch? You have no idea what business to start.

Revolutionary Idea

One day, as you stroll by a frozen lake, an idea strikes—what if you could ship ice from the lake to hot regions of the world where it’s never cold enough for snow or ice? A brilliant business idea, right?

Excited…., you run it past a few friends, only to be told it’s ridiculous. ?But as any founder knows, once you’ve had an idea, it’s hard to let go. Even when everyone says it won’t work, your mind can’t stop thinking about it.

Pushback: Defying the Naysayers

At our WISE Tech | SPJIMR programs, one of the first conversations we have is about laying out your hypothesis? Every start-up idea is an untested hypothesis and every founder should be able to articulate it properly.

So, what’s your hypothesis here? Take a moment to think about it… before reading on…

?“People living in hot climates will value and pay a premium for access to ice, a commodity they have never experienced, as it provides both comfort and novelty”

Your friends argue that people in hot regions won’t care about ice because they’ve never had it. They think you’re wasting your time.

Infact, many of you liked the Painkiller-Vitamin-Dopamine test that I wrote about a few weeks back. If you ask me, I’d call this idea a Vitamin. Vitamins improve quality of life, but customers don’t feel a pressing need and struggle to open their wallets. It takes time for people to start missing your product enough to pay for it.

But you are young, ambitious and convinced your idea will work.

"The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible—and achieve it, generation after generation." – Pearl S. Buck

Testing the Waters

So you MVP your idea. You buy a ship, load it with ice, and send it to the hot West Indies. But your idea doesn’t work. Most of the ice melts away in transit, and when it finally arrives, people don’t know what to do with it!

Your friends look at you smugly: "Didn’t I say so? What else did you expect?"

Melting Dreams

In startup terms, you now face three major problems:

1. Customer Adoption: Customers find your product novel but unnecessary. They like it but can live without it, and there’s no FOMO to drive adoption.
2. High Customer Acquisition Cost: The logistics are expensive, and most of the ice melts during transit, raising costs.
3. Funding Issues: VCs point out two major challenges—your market isn’t big enough, and your business model isn’t viable.

So, what do you do? Will you quit the business, or will you build a viable business here?

Part 2 of this story…

#startups #entrepreneurship #ideatoseed